


listen to the sound of my love for you

by yewgrove



Category: Mozart l'Opéra Rock - Mozart/Baguian & Guirao
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, barely deserves the m rating tbh but it's more than t so, salieri finally getting around to expressing his emotions in a healthy way, soft nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 15:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18101357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yewgrove/pseuds/yewgrove
Summary: Praising Mozart would have felt too much like a confession.





	listen to the sound of my love for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mozalieri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozalieri/gifts).



> for jo, with biggest possible love!  
> au in that constance didn't marry mozart and that mozart doesn't die  
> title is from sound of an orchestra by mika aka the most mozalieri song i've ever heard.  
> it's been so long since i posted fic, i don't remember how this works, sorry everyone

Salieri didn’t find it easy to give voice to his emotions.

He was unlike Mozart in this respect, as in many things - Mozart, who communicated in pure feeling, not only with his voice but with his hands, his eyes, his music. Coming so close to death, it seemed, had only made him more enamoured with life in all its complexity and wonder, and his determination to gild every moment with affection shone through in every motion he made. Love was Mozart’s language, and too often Salieri felt ignorant of it, unable to turn the intensity of his emotions outwards, to give in to the sincerity that Mozart shone with.

Mozart had caught him staring earlier that day, again. He had called him out on it with a half-laughing ‘Remember to blink, Antonio!’, and Salieri had brushed it off, as he always did; made some ironic comment, moved on before any of the words tugging at his heart had made their way out into the open.

They were friends now - at least, Salieri assumed so, although the intensity of his interactions with Mozart was strange territory for him, playing in a more complex key than the easy camaraderie of reticent sarcasm, with its well-defined boundaries, that he shared with Stephanie and the other members of the Emperor’s court. It had been easy, in the end. When he had inserted himself into Mozart’s presence, after Mozart’s illness and the failure of Figaro, at least half of him had been expecting Mozart to send him away again, to refuse to see him. Instead, by some miracle, Mozart had greeted him by his first name, with a smile that flooded Salieri’s heart like sunlight. All Salieri’s mistakes, all his fears - they didn’t mean anything, not there, not then. Mozart had been sick and distracted, nearly frantic at his perceived inability to reach the notes he wanted - well, Salieri could understand _that_. And to Mozart, whatever Salieri had done, or had thought he had done; whatever he was, or had thought he was, he was still a fellow composer, someone who understood Mozart not for the entertainment he provided, but for where he came from and what he was constantly striving for. Or, more simply, Mozart had recognised Salieri as a friend. He’d always been able to see the truth of things more easily than Salieri.

Over the weeks of Mozart’s recovery, Salieri had kept coming to visit - careful and polite, at first, until he realised that no amount of care on his part could keep Mozart from laughing at him, at which point he slipped ungraciously back into sarcasm, clumsy jokes that he dared Mozart to pick up on with as straight a face as he could manage to keep, emotional outbursts of laughter or frustration that were becoming embarrassingly frequent. Allowing himself to reveal so much was dangerous; it was impossible not to. Since Salieri had first laid eyes on him, Mozart had been able to get under his skin like nobody else. As his rival, he’d provoked him into some frankly embarrassing lapses in dignity, and if Salieri had thought that was bad, he had had no idea of the difficulties involved in being Mozart’s friend.

Salieri had read once about rocks in the desert, which shrank in the cold of the night and then expanded again in the day’s warmth, over and over, until they split apart. Mozart’s companionship, his laughter, his warmth, was slowly splitting Salieri’s heart open, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Meanwhile, Mozart’s music was reaching new heights and depths. He had not published anything since his illness, apart from a few commissions; the macabre mystery of the requiem had inspired several less-anonymous well-to-dos to commission their own pieces, more for the salon talking point of having their own piece written by the man commissioned by Death than out of any true appreciation for Mozart’s music - but he was writing, and showed Salieri what he was working on as he completed it, and God, such works. Here again Salieri lacked the words to accurately praise Mozart. He did what he could, let fall a rough _excellent_ or a _truly remarkable_ , the words dropping from him like an involuntarily loosened cravat, and watched how Mozart absorbed the appreciation.

For someone so publicly celebrated, Mozart was remarkably sensitive to praise. He took flattery in his stride, tossed it around like a ball, played games with it. But genuine, sincere praise - he listened to it quietly, seriously, as though he was storing it up. As though he wasn’t used to it. It broke Salieri’s heart, the idea that Mozart might not _know_ how brightly how shone, how much he meant. How much people loved him. Salieri had always found him radiant, even back at the beginning of their acquaintance, back when he hadn’t known how to exist alongside Mozart’s brightness without feeling eclipsed. It had scared him back then, the depth of wonder and passion and emotion that Mozart had inspired in him.

It didn’t scare him any more. These days, Salieri watched Mozart shining, and felt the weight of all his unsaid words jostling within him, and wished his heart ragged that he was able to give Mozart the praise that he deserved.

Salieri sometimes thought that he was the only one in Vienna who truly understood Mozart’s pursuit of music. At times it had felt as though Salieri had spent his entire life in useless, painful pursuit of the divinity that Mozart pulled down from the heavens without a second thought. He knew better, now. Mozart saw beauty - and terror, and wonder, and all the infinite emotions of his music - not only in the inaccessible heavens, but in their reflection in everything around him. The power of his music and his pursuit of life were inextricably bound together. Salieri had been struggling, agonizing, to reach upwards towards heaven, instead of simply reaching out to take someone’s hand.

Mozart had to know. He understood feeling, thrived in it; he’d built his career around it, breathing emotion out of the air around him and pouring it back into the world as music. It was impossible that he should see the way Salieri looked at him - the way Salieri _acted_ around him, God, like a lovesick fool - and not understand. But nothing changed, except that Mozart’s grins grew wider day by day, his behaviour more provocative, the little moments where the world skidded to a breathless stop around them on the incidental catch of their glances more frequent - and still Salieri said nothing.

Praising Mozart would have felt too much like a confession.

*

They were working together, because Stephanie had requested it, on his latest libretto. At least, that was what they were doing in theory. In practise, they had dragged the melody of the day’s aria to a soaring conclusion, and now Salieri was doing his best to fill in the accompaniments, while Mozart was doodling rambunctious cascades of irrelevant notes on a spare sheet of manuscript paper. The flick of his wrist, and the shining of his eyes as he watched Salieri’s distraction, was becoming unbearable.

‘Mozart,’ said Salieri, in the way he _knew_ made Mozart notice. Sure enough, Mozart’s wrist stilled, and his eyes became more tightly focused, as though Salieri was spinning together the threads of his attention, taut and shining. Salieri felt a spike of pride, and sharp affection.

‘Yes, maestro?’ Mozart asked, any suggestion of innocence in his words and tone completely belied by the smile that he was giving Salieri.

‘Could you focus?’ Salieri managed, addressed in equal measure to himself.

‘The aria’s finished.’

‘Finished in your mind and finished written on the page are two very distinct concepts.’ Mozart’s propensity for leaving the mundane work of writing out the parts until the last minute made life difficult for his orchestras. It made life difficult for Salieri, too, a fact of which Mozart, judging by the quirk of his lips, was fully aware.

‘Then by all means continue, if you can think of nothing more enjoyable to be doing. Don’t let me distract you!’

Mozart leaned across Salieri’s shoulder to look over the notes he’d been writing. Salieri could feel his warmth, the brush of his hair against his jaw. He could feel Mozart in all his senses, in the rough thrum of his blood.

‘Do I seem distracted,’ Salieri said, not even a question, a default response of useless posturing, and felt his cheeks darken with a blush under Mozart’s evaluating glance. He was, he knew, sending Mozart a dark-eyed, ruffled, fractured glower, one that was absolutely incapable of concealing whatever vast and inexpressible things lay beneath it.

Mozart reached out a hand, his left, and tucked a strand of hair falling awry at Salieri’s temple back behind his ear. Salieri felt his fingers still there for a second, his thumb brushing Salieri’s cheekbone.

Then he pulled away. ‘A little, yes.’

This was what they did lately, the two of them. Mozart flirted, pushed the limits of what he could get away with, pretended the concept of shame didn’t exist, seemingly anything to drag those looks out of his fellow composer. And it worked. Salieri would rise to the bait, always, meeting Mozart’s eyes with a stare that tried desperately for decorum and failed, lapsing into a dangerous oscillation between poorly concealed amusement, fake disapproval and painfully real arousal - and then Mozart would smile, and move away. They both knew the game they were playing, Salieri was sure of it - but never sure enough of himself to make the next move, never able to cede any more ground than had already been won from him in their unacknowledged dance of - flirting? Desire? Salieri didn’t know.

He could have asked. Could have taken the risk, pushed it farther, demanded that Mozart explain what they were doing, whether he truly wanted Salieri - of all people - to take him up on what he seemed to be offering. Instead, he cleared his throat slightly, tightened his lips, felt the corner of his mouth curve in a pained concession to his own weakness. ‘Back to work,’ he managed. ‘If you please.’

Mozart sat down with a tilt of his eyebrows, finally looking away. ‘You win this round, Antonio.’

Salieri tried, and failed, to force his attention back to the score in front of him. Mozart had pulled his own papers back towards himself, dipped his pen back into the ink, idly, and was drawing a long line up the margin of the page, attempting to find the place he’d left off earlier. Salieri found himself unable to look away from the glide of his hand, the press of the nib, the ribbon of ink that shone with the same dark flare as Mozart’s eyes.

The room was quiet, the silence broken only by the slow drag of Mozart’s pen. Salieri could feel his pulse jumping in his throat. He wanted to touch Mozart, to feel his fingers drag across the other man’s skin, to press a kiss to the corner of his smiling mouth. He wanted.

It was dizzyingly quiet. Salieri was waiting, he realised distantly, for Mozart to notice him staring.

Mozart’s hand slowed, pressing the pen harder against the paper, allowing a shining disc of ink to pool from the nib, and something inside Salieri gave.

‘For the love of God,’ he said, suddenly, and then stopped, not knowing how to continue. Mozart looked round at him, curious, with just the hint of a smile.

‘At your service.’

Salieri blinked. ‘What?’

‘My name,’ Mozart clarified. His voice was light, calm. ‘Amadeus; it means…’

‘Ah,’ said Salieri, for lack of a better way to respond to that. God, he must really look worse than usual, for Mozart to be looking at him so curiously.

‘Antonio?’

He stood, neatening his cuffs; he had a vague, nonsensical feeling that this would be easier to say standing. Mozart turned his chair and stood to match him, which meant that he was, abruptly, very close. Close enough to reach.

‘You’ve forgiven me for being mistaken about things before,’ he managed to say, through the rush of Mozart’s closeness, the clamour of his every cell to close the distance between them. ‘I do not think that I am mistaken about this, but if I am, I hope you will do the same again.’

Mozart’s eyes were wide on his, steady, sure, expectant. Happy - and that rising ghost of simple happiness was the final, insupportable temptation, because if Mozart truly wanted this, wanted him -

He reached for Mozart with an urgency half desperation and half intoxicating relief, took his face in his hands, kissed him. He could feel Mozart gasp against him, grin, and press back with all the surprising sweetness that Salieri had come to expect from his friend, his hands flying up to clutch at Salieri’s shoulders, pulling himself as close to Salieri as possible with an electrified hum of pleasure. God, he was beautiful; Salieri felt him shudder as he dragged his tongue across his lower lip, and pulled away with some reluctance, intending to tell him so.

Mozart chased Salieri’s mouth for a second as Salieri pulled back, seemingly unwilling to let him get too far away; they ended up with Mozart’s forehead resting against Salieri’s, their hands tangled between their hearts, Salieri running his thumb over Mozart’s knuckles with a fierce rush of joy at being able to do so openly, to show Mozart his pleasure in it. Mozart brushed another kiss over his lips, smiling openly.

‘ _Finally_ ,’ he said. ‘You took your time, maestro.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Salieri started, then started again, distracted by the sensation of Mozart’s hips brushing against his. ‘I didn’t know if it was just a game to you.’

‘I don’t know how I could have been more obvious.’ The smile was still on Mozart’s face, but there was a brief flicker in his eyes. ‘I was beginning to think that _I’d_ been wrong, and that you didn’t want me after all.’

That was insupportable. Salieri released Mozart’s hands in favour of grabbing his hips, deepening the points of his fingers into the fabric, pulling Mozart against him and letting him feel how much Salieri wanted him. ‘I’ve wanted you since I first met you.’

The light was back in Mozart’s eyes now, as he arched lightly against Salieri, dragging a hiss from him. ‘Really? I thought you said I was an unprofessional scatterbrain?’

‘You were. Ridiculous, obstinate, _maddening_ -’ this punctuated with a nip to the hollow of Mozart’s throat that made him shudder - ‘the most frustratingly beautiful distraction I’d ever encountered.’

‘Beautiful?’

He’d said it - and the hint of a blush, the pure wondering merriment of the grin on Mozart’s breathless face undid Salieri. It was as though a thread, somewhere in his closely woven heart, had caught on the sharp daring edges of that smile; caught and pulled, and all the words that Salieri didn’t know how to say came unravelling out of him in a rush. ‘Beautiful, brilliant - God, looking at you, listening to you; you’re sublime. You make me forget to breathe; you make the world golden. I love you.’ Salieri’s throat ached with the relief of saying it. He bent himself to kissing Mozart again, to tangling his fingers in the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘Beautiful.’

Mozart was revelling in the attention, of course, arching brazenly up against Salieri, bursting with a happiness that was radiant even by Mozart’s standards. He’d completely abandoned himself to it, Salieri realised with a thrill, to Salieri’s words, Salieri’s touches; it was _Salieri_ who had brought him to all this joy. 

‘Antonio,’ he said, a rough catch to his voice that was new to Salieri, part laughing entreaty and part demand. ‘I love you, I want you, Antonio -’

‘Then you can help me with these buttons,’ Salieri managed, fumbling another and sparing a thought from his sensation-distracted mind to curse the inconvenient standards of fashion. Mozart managed one, haphazardly, before turning his attention to tugging at Salieri’s cravat, pulling him back for another kiss. There was a hint of laughter in his glance as he caught Salieri’s eye, and Salieri intercepted it with a narrowing of his eyes, finally wresting the waistcoat free and dragging his nails down the sides of Mozart’s shirt, unable to suppress quirking his own lips to keep back a rush of corresponding delight. ‘Focus.’

‘Then give me something to focus on, maestro.’

Blatant, brazen, brilliant, beautiful. Salieri abandoned the effort to suppress his smile, and gave in to Mozart's invitation. For once there were no words caught at the back of his throat, nothing left unsaid or trapped inside his heart; only the sheer laughing happiness of the present moment, the shock of delighted sensation, the love of the man who understood him.

Salieri had been half right, before: praising Mozart was a confession, but not only confession. It also felt like absolution.


End file.
